


Like Children

by Ruuger



Series: End Notes [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Deathfic, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-17
Updated: 2007-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles' story in a series of character-based ficlets centered around the theme of last moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Children

There are stories he remembers, told to him by his grandfather (of the Great War) and his father (of vampires and watchers) in the light of the fireplace on cold winter evenings. Tales of adventure, honour, and courage, and enough blood to keep a small boy interested.

If there was a moral to these stories, it was the same that had been drilled to him by his father, by his father's father, by the watcher's academy and the Council - that there was no death greater than to die for the cause. For country, for honour, for humanity, for _her_.

With the darkness already lurking at the edges of his vision, Giles lets his eyes close and tries to imagine his father - killed by a vampire just months before his retirement - and what he would think of it all. The soft bed and softer morphine, the smell of urine, disinfectant, and withering gerberas.

Giles knows what his father would say, but he also knows that those words would be nothing but lies.

There is a warm hand in his and when Giles opens his eyes, he sees Buffy standing above him, smiling. He looks at her, at the stray gray hairs that have escaped the peroxide, at the crow's feet gathering in the corners of her eyes, and he knows that what he has is something better: to be free of his greatest fear, twice already realised.

He closes his eyes with peace in his heart and his slayer by his side - old, wise and alive. It's the death all watchers dream of.


End file.
